Monday, 24 August 2015

Britain should be the world's unsinkable hospital ship

Labour is looking for things that aren't broken to fix. In most
instances, Labour is all at sea because despite the British propensity
for whining constantly, most things work quite well. The things that are
broken require some entirely new thinking that lies beyond their
obsolete paradigm. They lack the mental architecture to even begin to
formulate coherent policy. If you ask most people what's broken, they'd
probably say the immigration system. Labour thinks it's our first class
railways. They're not even on the same planet.

What leaves me in a state of dismay is the complete lack of vision and
ambition. During World War 2, Britain came to the rescue of an entire
continent and was leading the way. Now our dismal Westminster clan think
we need the talking shop in Strasbourg in order to have influence. And
to think the Americans once called us the unsinkable aircraft carrier.

We are not that same country any more. We are better and richer in most
respects. But we're sliding. All of Europe is suffering under the strain
of a global migration problem and we're sat on our hands asking for
permission to do something about it. What I want to see is some
confident and patriotic policy making.

By patriotic, I don't mean wrapping ourselves in the flag, closing the
borders and demanding proof of identity in every government office. I
want us to be the unsinkable hospital ship. I want a British presence in
every failing African state. I want faster and better routes for people
to come in to our country, on limited visas for those who want to join
our NHS - on the understanding that when their visa runs out they may
not work in the NHS again. We should be the health academy that trains
the worlds doctors and nurses. We bring in poor migrants and we send out
medical professionals. Let's offer the world a deal.

The remittances sent back, and the professionals we send back will be
the bedrock of a new Africa. Our global mission should be to create an
Africa that Africans don't want to leave - and have no need to. We can
do that with a more active foreign policy that doesn't wait on the EU,
and we can do that by being more open, with more legitimate ways for
people to get here, thus ending the need to make a perilous journey
across the sea.

I want a RFA ship in every African port, British frigates guarding every
trade route and engineers building roads and bridges in places we've
never heard of. A fortress mentality is not how Britain solves its
problems or progresses. We didn't become the wealthiest and most free
nation on Earth by turning inward or subordinating ourselves to
bureaucratic institutions.

The snivelling and claustrophobic politics that has befallen Britain
forgets who we are and what we are capable of. It is also built on a
flawed assumption - that building walls and closing ourselves off is
cheaper for the taxpayer and reduces demand on public services. It
doesn't. We can't shut the world out forever and even that does not come
for free. A police state is an expensive thing to run - and no nation
ever got richer by reducing the liberties of its citizens.

The values of progressivism and international development and human
rights were practically invented by the British. We exported that to the
world. Even the UN was partly our creation. And now our politicians
tell us that those institutions exported these things to us via the EU.
They lie.

We're now looking at a global state of emergency, and never has there
been a time when the world needs Britain and its cultural exports more.
This is a time for an assertive Britain willing to act and ready to show
leadership to a Europe paralysed by indecision.

It's time to ditch the EU and go global - to develop new markets, to
bring Africa out of the darkness and lead the way in embracing this
exciting globalised world. For too long we have had the miserablist left
telling us that Britain was a great evil in the world, but those
nations that were touched by Britain at her best are the nations who
will be the first to step out of the developing world and into the first
world. They will do that with our engineering, scientific and
administrative expertise.

We won't preserve the best of Britain by shutting ourselves off and we
won't do that as subordinates to the EU. We will preserve what's great
about Britain by confidently asserting our values in the world once
again. We certainly have nothing to lose by it - but everything to lose
by being afraid of the future.